The veteran advisor says that the firm’s recognition, roots in his hometown prompted a move
Rob Tétrault has been a trend setter for the Canadian advisory business. The Winnipeg-based advisor was one of the first in Canada to build out a YouTube and social media channel as a marketing arm of his business. He has grown his team along with his business to deliver better service. He has built a significant practice while he ran marathons across the globe, and he just moved to Wellington-Altus.
Tétrault explained some of why he moved, noting a deep connection between his own practice in Winnipeg and Wellington-Altus’ roots in that city. He noted his excitement to refine his social media and content creation work, his wider goals for the practice he’s built and what comes next for him as an advisor who “isn’t going anywhere.”
“They’re in my building,” Tétrault says of the Wellington-Altus head office at Portage & Main in Winnipeg. “So I would constantly see the success that they’re having, the growth they’re having. I figure that we’ve got one life to live, and I’m going to have one chance to serve my clients and give the best-in-class service of my career, and the time for that is now.”
The choice and the Winnipeg connection
Tétrault notes that he had a long previous relationship with many of Wellington-Altus’ key leaders, including Founder & Chair Charlie Spiring and Founder & CEO Shaun Hauser. In his past career as a lawyer, Tétrault says he had known them and many of their colleagues. Moreover, he notes that Winnipeg’s smaller circle of financial professionals made this move feel like he was ‘getting the band back together.
Tétrault, who is an avid user of social media as an advisor, explained that he started his YouTube channel to combat some of the “crap” that investors can find on the internet. He wanted to offer valuable information that spoke to specific Canadian wealth topics for free. That strategy has worked for Tétrault as a public educator and as an advisor, with over 14,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
Growth plans and institution building
Aged 45, Tétrault says he loves his work and he can’t imagine a world where he’s not engaging with his staff and solving problems for his clients. As much as he says he enjoys the investment side of the business, he finds real joy in breaking down complex concepts and finding plans that solve his clients’ problems.
Part of that growth will come from finding new clients himself, and some will come through the hiring of new associates who can grow the practice further. Tétrault’s team is currently 14 people, and he wants to grow that team, hiring people who score high on client care, what Tétrault calls his “give a s*it meter.” He says that new associates can help grow the business further and turn it into something that lasts beyond just his own career.
The decisions that Tétrault is making around his practice, his career, and the life of his business beyond his own working years rest on some of the reflective work he did while completing a PhD in Global Business and Leadership at California Intercontinental University. In that program he reflected on where he can add value, realizing that his best service to clients is in the advice he offers around difficult planning problems that clients reckon with.
He also studied risk mitigation, and while Tétrault doesn’t want to retire anytime soon, he has already worked to establish processes and institutional knowledge that will ensure that his practice lasts, saying, “if one person understands how to build something bigger than yourself, it’s Charlie Spiring.”
For advisors considering their own relationships with their dealers or what they want in their careers or for their clients, Tétrault says that a reflection on why they do what they do can motivate a positive change. He believes that has been the case for his business.
“Make a list on a piece of paper, the old-fashioned way, or in an Excel spreadsheet if that's your thing. And make your list of your whys. Why are you doing what you do? Why are you in the industry? Who matters to you? And then put a column next to it and ask, are you in a comfortable spot with that why right now today? And if the answer is no for a whole bunch of those or for some of those, I would ask, if there is a way for you to address those?,” Tétrault says. “I started meditating. I started doing a whole bunch of things in my life in the last 5 years. And it's important to realize that we only have one of these lives. So, let's grab that.”
